A touching novel of hope and despair

A.L. Kennedy's haunting tale of a woman who struggles with alcoholism

May 15, 2005|By Art Winslow. Art Winslow, former literary and executive editor of The Nation, is writer-in-residence at Western Michigan University this spring.

Paradise

By A.L. Kennedy

Knopf, 288 pages, $25

Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy is drunk on her own prose, we realize, not a dozen pages into her new novel, "Paradise." Her narrator steps into a mirror-lined elevator and, seeing herself replicated ad nauseam, fears that she is "an extra in some truly sadistic, educational short," in which "all that I'm fond of as me is cupped up in this single, staring instant. . . . [T[his is the only point where I'm recognisable, where I make sense--beyond it, I'm nothing but distortion and then I completely disappear."

That thought describes the arc of Kennedy's novel, and progressively her narrator's perceptions, too, as we gurgle along an additional 270-plus pages on the tongue of the speaker, alcoholic Hannah Luckraft. Hannah is by turns misanthropic, self-loathing, hopeful, thieving, mending, lovelorn, ashamed, confused, elated, blacked out, amnesiac and 90-proof insightful. This last quality--Hannah's pinpoint comments on the human condition--creates something of a conundrum for Kennedy, for her narrator is simultaneously debilitated by her unshakeable habit and yet penetratingly lucid when it comes to life, even amid her haze of uncertainty.

In "Paradise," there is the same oscillation between hope and despair that we find in the journals of John Cheever: a faith in life that degrades to chagrin and dejection in the entropy of each day, only to repeat itself the next. And parallels to Malcolm Lowry's drunken consul, Geoffrey Firmin, in "Under the Volcano" will come to readers' minds as well. Firmin writes in a letter, in fact, that he considers himself an explorer "who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell." That is the strong sense exuded by Hannah Luckraft, but Kennedy is sly enough to have it demonstrated by Hannah's peregrinations, rather than stating it so baldly.

When we first meet Hannah, it's after a blackout and she confesses, "I am, once again, grinning firmly and thinking that I must have been somewhere and must now be coming back, which is new and important information and a cause for joy." She has misplaced "at least a day," during which she had a random sexual encounter with a married man staying at the same hotel, the dim awareness of which creeps into her consciousness only slowly. Later she comments, "I am not as I was, but no one else is, either--it doesn't mean I'm in decline." That sort of denial and yet full cognizance of her situation are annealed in Hannah's thoughts and actions throughout "Paradise." At one point she thinks:

"I am a disgrace. I know this. But it's been true for years, there is no reason for it to hurt any more than usual today."

Before concluding that the declension of an alcoholic in her mid-30s is not your cup of tea, be advised that Kennedy's writing, slightly experimental in form here and there, is exceptionally strong: unsettled, tense, vibrant, humorous and intermittently guttermouthed too. And amid the erratic gropings of Hannah as she seeks some purchase and love in this world are touching, even haunting, scenes that sketch out her relations with her parents and brother. A love interest and fellow alcoholic, Robert Gardener, is a kind of cross between enabler and savior.

Kennedy gives the romantic story line prominence, just as frustrated love situations were a major concern the last time we heard from her, in her story collection "Indelible Acts." But other than descriptions of the physicality of the relationship and a solid characterization of its embodiment of desire, it is oddly unmoving compared with Hannah's struggle with drink. And she, it seems, is her own most intoxicating spirit:

"Being me is a job--is labour so time-consuming and expensive that I have to have a second job just to support it. So that I can drink, I have to get drink and that isn't something people give away and then there's the drink that I need because I have drunk and the other drink I have to keep around because, sooner or later, I will drink it."

Why the title "Paradise"? Because Kennedy is interested in the question of salvation on this earth, and religious tones drift through the book like background hymns at times. Hannah steps on a nail, which punctures her boot and foot, and she remarks "And here, after so many, is another sign: my rusty indication of God's intimate concern and--reamed up through my sole--the kind of pun that's unforgivable." The novel's title is taken from a dream in which Hannah has a shot of perfect alcohol, "the warmth of my own true home and a welcome indoors . . . and then it stings with the tranquil, acid cool of death. And the taste is every good taste I remember and beyond them, more, skirting the undiluted flavour of paradise." The same dream also brings blood pooling around her feet, "the deep, bright waste of my life."